I asked for advice about the seemingly overwhelming prospect of piloting our own boat on European canals and waterways years ago on this forum, but nothing substantial beyond "Did it, it was nice." It had been a dream for years, but my husband and I wanted to get a good "crew" together to properly enjoy it, and we wanted to do it France, and decided having someone who spoke passable French would be a plus. Finally we confessed this dream to a Franco-American couple we knew who took charge and actually booked the trip for us and 2 other couples (8 people total). We were a motley group of expats who'd all lived in Stuttgart at one point or another - five Americans, an Aussie, a Dane, and a Frenchman. We're all really good friends, which is important, because if you're going to spend a week together on the close confines of a ship in the surprisingly stressful situation of driving a 49 foot boat on your own, you better freakin' like each other.
On the subject of the boat...well, my husband and I are the paupers in the group. Everyone else wanted comfy quarters and at least one bathroom/shower per couple whereas we were willing to go with a more modest boat, but we got outvoted. In the long run, this was both good and bad. We ended up the most luxurious boat you can rent from any agency. The rooms were small, but spacious for a boat, and there was even a "crew quarters" (if we'd elected to hire a skipper and/or cook) which we used to store luggage and booze. In the end, all those extra bathrooms were superfluous, as we weren't supposed to use the toilets or shower while docked at a port anyway and were instead supposed to make use of the terrifying facilities our company, Le Canalous, provided at their ports. (I abandoned that idea after the first night. I was not going to climb off ship just to pee at 3am. Also a word of warning: You will know the pooping habits of your shipmates after a week on a boat with them. It's inevitable.)
The other big minus about a big, luxurious boat is that it's a big, luxurious pain in the ass. Sure, our deck furniture was great, but piloting a boat that in some places was as long as the canal itself was wide was a huge headache. I don't want to discourage anyone from taking this kind of trip - it was amazing - but piloting the boat was difficult. It's akin to driving a school bus, if the bus took 10 seconds to respond to anything you did with the wheel and had no brakes. Out of the 8 of us, only 2 became anywhere near comfortable the job. I was terrible at it and only did any serious driving on the ocean-like Etang de Thau, a giant tidal lake more like a bay. (I was comfortable because there was nothing I could run into). Obstacles such as the long tunnel, very low and tight bridges, locks, other boats, and just the parking required at certain ports were all difficult. Nevermind issues like strong winds and currents and shallow shoals in certain places. We may have hit another boat or 5, but only two at high speeds, at least. And we only ran the boat aground once, which we rectified by having half the crew push the boat in waist-deep canal water while sinking through muck that covered sharp volcanic rock. Anyone who'd driven the boat for any significant time quickly became jealous of the much smaller boats we saw navigating the waters with relative ease.
I don't want to go into too much detail, although I hope to get pictures up by tomorrow and will link to an album in a reply. We'd originally hoped to leave from Carcassone, but even the first week in September the boats were sold out by June, so we left from Homps instead for a one-week trip ending in Carnon.